Famous Quotes & Sayings

George Bernard Shaw

Instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespeare, Othello is a play written by Shakespeare in the style of Italian opera.

Fredrik Bajer

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand.

Cantabile is Italian for 'in a singing style'.

J. G. Ballard

People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology.

Jerry Saltz

Although I adore the Italian High Renaissance, I'd rather look at Mannerism. The former is ordered, integrated, otherworldly, and grandiose; it leaves you feeling hungry for something flawed and of-the-flesh.

Jerry Saltz

Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years?

Michael Pollan

It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American): to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather than subtraction.

Sebastian Bach

My vocal style is called bel canto, which is an old Italian vocal style going back hundreds of years.

Teri Garr

I remember when we did our first read-through, Sonny [Bono] looks at the script and he goes, 'Okay, I'll see you guys later. Chai-ay-oh!' And I said, 'It's ciao! Aren't you Italian? C-i-a-o doesn't spell chai-ay-oh.' [Laughs.] Sonny's dead, so he won't be embarrassed if I tell that story.

Martin Scorsese

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.

Maynard James Keenan

But I'm a hot-blooded Italian by nature. Whatever the situation you present, I'm going to make something out of it.

Maurice Sendak

A whole new world of Italian music was springing up, and [Giuseppe] Verdi was seen as old. Boito got Verdi all excited about the possibility of doing another opera, another kind of opera. In fact, Verdi composed his two best operas, Otello and Falstaff, in his eighties.

Patricia Briggs

Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.

Martin Scorsese

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.

Lee Child

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on.

Norman Jewison

I'm going to do an adaptation of the Italian film, Bread and Tulips. I really like that film.

Mario Balotelli

Inside me I'm Ghanaian, and I'm proud to be African. But of course I'm Italian. I was born in Italy. I've never been to Africa in my life, but I will go one day.

Mario Cuomo

For me to make lasagna would be a desecration of a great Italian dish. . . . I don't mess with sacred things.

Mario Batali

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

Mario Batali

Day-old bread? Sadly, in America a lot of day-old bread just becomes nasty. Italian day-old bread, not having any preservatives in it, just becomes harder and it doesn't taste old. What I would warn people about is getting bread that's loaded with other things in it, because it starts to taste old.

Mary-Kate Olsen

The best part was the food. There are some great Italian restaurants we go to whenever we are in Toronto, so the eating was a definite highlight.

Michael Scott

Virginia," Billy said urgently. "Don't do this." "Shut up,Billy." "Think of the people in San Francisco." "I don't know any of the people in San Francisco," Virginia answered, then paused. "Well,actually I do,and I don't like them. But I do like you,Billy, and I'm not going to allow you to end up as lunch for some raggedy lion-monster-thingy." "A sphinx," Machiavelli corrected her. He was standing at the bars again. "Mistress Dare," the Italian said carefully. "I absolutely applaud you for what you want to do for your friend. But I urge you to think of the bigger picture.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Well, yeah. You said you wanted Italian. See. Chef Boyardee. He makes one the best stuff. (Tabitha)

Nicolas Cage

When I'm in England, I know I'm a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that's German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.

Mario Monti

I hope that my government can help change Italian mentality.

Mario Monti

The Italian economy has been held back for decades.

Nicole Trunfio

I love the feel of good quality Italian black lace that feels delicate and really feminine.

Nick Offerman

When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.

Josh Brolin

We talked to Sergei Bodrov who did "Mongel" who I thought was incredible. There was a lot of people who've done a lot of things that I really appreciate and then you go back to the Italian spaghetti westerns that our spaghetti westerns were based off of so I've seen everything.

Kristin Chenoweth

I want to eat good Italian food and get better at their language. It seems so romantic too.

I needed Quentin. I knew he would be very loud as a spokesman for Italian B movies.

Hidetoshi Nakata

I have no idea as to what's going on, but it seems that a Japanese reporter read something I had said to an Italian paper and misinterpreted my words.

James Fenton

A really interesting and happy time was when I first went to Florence as a student and studied Italian. I was living in a pensione on an allowance of £40 a month, which was princely. I did a lot of work and enjoyed myself immensely.